


i'd promise you anything

by vulcanlovesongs



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, discussion of suicide, its kind of midwestern gothic, patrick is a music major and pete is prelaw thats basically it, tiny midwestern college town lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-03-15 03:31:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcanlovesongs/pseuds/vulcanlovesongs
Summary: Pete is a political science major who finds his life archaically dull. Patrick knows obscure facts about Mozart.





	1. love of god

Pete had taken the dreary weather as a cue to indulge in a timely bit of ennui. He stalked about the library, searching out a book on Wesleyanism, and bemoaned the fact that it was finally too late to switch majors without staying an extra year. 

It wasn’t that he wanted to switch. Or that he couldn’t stay another year, if he really wanted. Political science was nice (comfortable?). He just felt the option’s lack more than he had appreciated its presence. 

_If this really were the 1700s, I could be an independently wealthy academic._ He considered this thought for a moment before resigning himself that the series of events that had lead him so benevolently into his parents’ wealth would probably have been impossible in 18th century England. He didn’t even really want to be an academic. But it was still nice that Charles Wesley used to help poor people. He snorted, and let himself be distracted by a copy of _Amadeus_ in a stack of books to be reshelved. He really wasn’t in the right aisle at all.

So far off course was he, that he’d come to the section of the second floor that housed the musical scores. A long line of oversized blue books numbered 1 through 1 million marked off Mozart’s symphonies and operas. _Not really a million,_ Pete corrected himself. _He died early._ He glanced down at the copy of Amadeus still in his hand. At the end of the shelf a smallish looking blonde sat, scribbling furiously at a notebook with a large blue book open in front of him.

“Why is it called Amadeus, anyway? Wasn’t his name Wolfgang?” Pete asked, and he felt soothed from his earlier morose mood, if only by the new task: _annoy the hot musician._ The blonde looked up, and his expression told Pete that he was personally offended by the question.

“Amadeus means ‘love of God.’ Only literally the whole point of the play,” he said crossly, and looked back down at his papers, continuing: “and it wasn’t his name. His middle name was Theophilus.”

“Clever,” Pete remarked, and almost meant it. He straddled a chair that was discarded to the side of the desk and took a closer look at the scribbles. “What are you doing?”

“Lots of stuff,” said the blonde. “None of it is your business.” Pete laughed, now glad that he’d come to the wrong aisle.

“It could be my business. _If_ we were friends,” said Pete.

“Well, we’re not.”

“But we could be,” Pete said in a sing-song voice, even though he wasn’t kidding. “My name’s Pete, what’s yours?” The blonde looked at him again, still looking annoyed but less so. Pete felt satisfaction, as it was a well known fact that everyone in the world loved people paying attention to them, and this irritable little musician was proof that Pete was not only correct, but an undergraduate master of Grand level theories.

“I’m Patrick,” he said. “And what I’m doing is copying the cello part of Symphony 41 out of this book.”

“Isn’t that a lot of work?”

“I don’t wanna pay for the sheet music,” he replied evasively.

“The copyright has been up for like, literal centuries. You can get it for free,” Pete said, and Patrick turned red. A flower bloomed from Pete’s crusty pre-law heart.

“Its possible that I’m avoiding other work,” he admitted, and Pete tried to recall ever being so charmed by anything.

“And here you had me thinking you were a dedicated, hard-working library dweller,” he came up with nothing.

“Like you’re being any more productive,” Patrick said, and Pete thought to himself that he was being _very_ productive.


	2. anomie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete and Andy talk French sociology

A ways out of Drury, there was an abandoned barn in an otherwise untouched pastoral setting. Pete and his friends usually came there to smoke. 

“I’ve narrowed it down,” Pete announced, ashing a menthol on the wood floor, still damp from the last rain.

“Narrowed what down?” Asked Andy, who didn’t smoke but apparently came for the fellowship. 

“The cause of my suicide. Its either anomic or egoistic.”

“Forget the debate. Its egoistic,” Andy said. “Though reading Durkheim at all might demonstrate that liberty leads to alienation.”

“It was required reading!” It hadn’t been. It had been suggested to him at least once though, he was certain. Pete was very suggestable, but he was at least self-aware. “There’s no point in even knowing what anomie is if you can’t have an anomic suicide.”

“Sorry. You can still have an asinine suicide, though,” Andy smirked but then looked thoughtful for a moment, and then his face went all grim, and Pete felt a bit sick. “In all seriousness, though, are you okay, is that why we’re talking about this?” The sick feeling didn’t go away. He wished Andy had just accused him of looking for attention. But Andy would never do that to him. 

“Is this gonna be worth it?” He asked, weakly, unable to hold back. His voice was little more than a whisper. “My degree? Law school?”

“It’ll help people,” Andy reminded him. Pete knew he was right, but the sick feeling transformed into the surreal sense that his heart itself was cracking.

“I don’t know if I want to. I don’t know if I want to help them,” he said, and felt his eyes grow wet. 

“Them?” Pete couldn’t answer, couldn’t explain the distance between him and them, the rest of the world, that felt farther every day. How could he explain to anyone, when he couldn’t even explain it to himself?

The cigarette burned out, forgotten on the floor, and wet air breezed through holes in the rotten wood of the walls. Pete pictured the whole structure falling in on itself, crushing them both where no one would ever know they had gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you haven't heard of Durkheim don't google him its artsier to just not know


	3. yearning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> students of music and politics engage in art critiques

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a bitchy little bit about artists, but its all in good fun.

Pete was rarely spontaneous unless he was in a foul mood, and an ill-received lecture on Plato had him pacing the halls of the fine arts building, only sort of looking for Patrick, who he knew by now had an 11:30 composition class that ought to be ending soon.

Spending so much time in the fine arts building rubbed him the wrong way. Art students tended to make pieces at least peripherally satirical, and the way art students thought about politics reminded Pete of stoners. Slow, dim, and rarely meaningful in sobriety. It wasn’t that Pete thought of artists as stupid people, but rather that to someone entrenched in the study of politics, the opinions of laypeople tended to lose veracity rather quickly. 

Musicians, however, he had recently grown to think very highly of. Or, at least, one specific musician. 

“Patrick!” He called once he spotted him. Patrick turned and smiled a small smile, and shifted his backpack to the other shoulder as Pete approached him. When Pete crowds in, his arms around Patrick, his fingers skate across a picture keychain that he’s noticed before but never looked at up close.

Now he does, unceremoniously manhandling Patrick around to look at his backpack, and Patrick bore it with only feigned annoyance. It's a little round picture of a lake. It looks like a simple stock photo, but its not labeled and Pete can tell its a picture that Patrick had taken, just an innocuous spot along Lake Michigan.

“Why just the lake?” He asked. Patrick turned to face him and looked very sad all of a sudden.

“I just like it. It reminds me that I have somewhere to go back to after all this is over,” he explained.

“After school’s over?”

“Maybe. After whatever my life is right now is over.” Patrick looks far away and a bit lost, but Pete thinks he knows just what Patrick means. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the real reason I included the bit about artists was because I saw a mannequin of princess leia with a shrek mask and strap on in the art building. so tell me I'm wrong.


	4. conviction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete and Pete's dad talk about the future and the past simultaneously.

It was the early dark of evening on one of Pete’s last nights visiting his parents for Christmas. At the time he was in his first year of college, and unsure of what he wanted from it. Alone in the car with his father, his mind wandered.

“What was law school like?” he asks, a feels a distinct discomfort. He doesn’t like asking his parents things like this. Or anyone, really. His father makes a thoughtful noise before he answers.

“It takes people who believe in a cause and makes them mercenary,” the elder Pete Wentz finally says. Pete hardly has time to comprehend this before he continues. “The mistake young people make is going to law school to fight for a cause. Feminism, environmentalism, what have you. But you don’t get to have a cause, you just join the cause that pays for your service.”

Pete had nothing to say to this. He couldn’t imagine that his father even wanted him to say anything. People, or perhaps just his father, got to an age where nothing anyone said could truly change how he thought of the world. _Maybe having convictions is what ages you_ Pete thinks, but does not say.

“Everyone’s a blade, but law school makes you a weapon,” Pete’s father finished. Pete considered that for a moment, then made a note in his phone. It had a lyrical quality to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol guess who inspired this convo


	5. self interest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick and Joe talk revenge, consider weed as commodity money

"D Chi blacklisted me yesterday, apparently," said Joe. He sounded terribly glum. He was on the sofa, and had dropped his head back so that he stared at the ceiling. It was the dead of winter, and the tiny apartment reflected the chill outside.

"Dude, why?" Patrick asked, and Joe lifted his head, his spirits raised a bit by the righteous indignation of Patrick's tone. 

"I broke a like, half full handle of UV last time I was there. It was totally an accident, though, like I was pouring a shot and it just slipped," he explained. Patrick snorted.

"UV sucks. You did them a favor," he replied. "You wanna report them for supplying alcohol to minors?"

"Why?" Joe asked, and Patrick gave him a look.

"For revenge, duh, they'll be put on probation and the university will investigate them and shit, it'll totally ruin their semester," he explained.

"How do you know that?"

"Pete told me he had a girlfriend last year who did it to TKE because one of their brothers asked if she wanted to have a threesome," he explained this, and then reflected on it. "I guess she really hated them? I've never been propositioned for a threesome but maybe he was an ass about it."

"I can't imagine a scenario where a frat guy would ever be not an ass about it," Joe remarked. They heard the door open and close in the next room.

"Are you kids still here?" Pete yelled, far too loudly for the tiny three room abode. He walked into the living room at the same time though, so the effect was entirely pointless.

"We'll never leave," Joe promised, pointing a finger to emphasize the joking threat. Pete only laughed and dropped on the floor next to where Patrick had a theory book on his lap, opened but unread.

"Guess what the lecture was about today," Pete demanded, moving the book and earning himself a smack on the arm when he rested his head in Patrick's lap instead.

"What?"

"A certain Glaswegian professor who lived with his mom all his life," Pete hinted. "And therefore is a personal hero of mine." Patrick wrinkled his nose and only gave Pete a doubtful look.

"Is Glaswegian really the word?"

"Yes! What else would it be?" Patrick had no argument, and Pete stuck his tongue out in a particularly immature way. Patrick rolled his eyes. "But man, Dr Ruday is a real Adam Smith fanatic. I assume it's because he also lives with his mom," Pete laughed at his own joke.

"Isn't Adam Smith the selfishness is good guy?" Joe chimed in. Suffice it to say, Joe had not taken an economics class in his life.

" _Self-interest_ ," Pete corrected. "Whatever. People act like that's bad but people are reliably selfish more than they are reliably altruistic."

"And to think I smoked you out last night, out of the goodness of my heart," Joe said, holding a hand over his heart in a mock wounded pose.

"Well...Adam Smith also wrote a book about the value of altruism," Pete added haltingly, and Patrick laughed at him. "He really did!" He looked up at Patrick to protest. "Nobody reads it though because its not Wealth of Nations." He went quiet, and left to his thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no hate to UV. its literally the first brand I thought of. these are also all real frats so i hope i don't catch hell for that


	6. coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pete flavored angst

The cemetery in Drury was on a hill that overlooked the hospital. Pete supposed that it must not rain too often. It was too cold to be out tonight, but he sat in the frozen mud with his hands shoved between his thighs anyway.

He missed the city. The Chicago suburb he hailed from wasn't even especially big, but Drury had 20,000 residents, counting the student population. Only the hospital mimicked the 24/7 pace of life that he had grown used to since birth. Watching the lights and cars come and go was comforting, just a bit.

The cemetery itself, too, was big where every other aspect of the town was small. It was the only one in town, which explained it. The graveyard was a sprawling metropolis, where the town was a wasteland with not even a Starbucks to its name.

Tears grew sharp in his eyes. His phone rang.

"Hello?" Pete answered, his voice sounded far away and dim, as though it were made of reeds in the freezing wind.

"Pete? Where are you?" It was Patrick. _He knows me too well_ , Pete thought, because of course he could hear the worried tone and felt something like guilt. Patrick was beautiful. Pete was to be a lawyer, but he had the sensitivity of a poet and he knew that someone like Patrick came only once--in all of human history--someone made just so, came only once.

He wanted to feel warmed, or grateful, or in love. But all he had was a detached, adrift feeling that he was overboard and Patrick was reaching to him, screaming from the masthead, while Pete drowned and was locked away from any feeling. It was nightmarish.

"The cemetery," he said hollowly. He wouldn't lie. He couldn't pretend to be better than he was. Over the phone, he heard a staticky rush, and knew Patrick was drawing a deep breath. He always did that, when he was upset or angry, drew in a breath like the fire inside of him needed extra oxygen to fuel that passion.

"I called because," his voice broke and he took another breath. _Please, please don't_ Pete thought, desperate for Patrick not to say what he knew was coming. "Because I need your help." Pete was thrown, because this was not what he had known Patrick would say.

"You what?" He asked, and this time his voice had a bit more life in it.

"I need your help," Patrick said, clearer this time, but still uncertain and slow. "Will you help me study for my government test? I don't understand anything and the test is next week." Pete couldn't help it then, because he laughed, loud at first, but he couldn't help that it turned to sobbing. He couldn't help it.

"Yeah, 'rick," he said when he could speak again. "Yes, I can help you. Do you want me to meet you at the dorm?"

"That would be great. I'm in my room, you-you know where right?"

"Yeah, I remember. I'll be there in a few, okay?"

"Thank you," Patrick replied, but then his voice fell to a whisper. "Thank you, Pete." The way Patrick said his name, all soft and gentle, made Pete want to cry again.

"I'll see you soon," he said instead, and stood up, wiped his eyes, and left through the open gate.

His hands were growing numb, so on his way over, he stopped at the gas station and bought a coffee. It wasn't particularly good coffee, but it was nice to hold something warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> consider any mention of boats a euphemism for suicide


	7. supposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'home is where the heart is'

Patrick is crying when Pete comes back from class. It's not obvious, because he isn’t making any sounds and his face is blank. But he’s sitting on the couch with earbuds in, and staring at the ceiling while tears sneak out of his eyes, apparently without his permission.

He sits on the couch next to Patrick, and just watches him. He knows it’ll annoy Patrick into speaking, and as much as Pete wishes he could find a way to be more tactful, he isn’t so sure that Patrick ever really wants tact, anyway. 

“Fuck off already,” Patrick eventually says, his voice is all nasally and high like someone whose either really sick or really upset. It upsets Pete, too. 

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Pete says, and it's not much of a question. He’s seen Patrick stubborn, angry, and disobedient, but he’s isn’t any of those things now, he just removes his earbuds and sighs. 

“You’re supposed to go to college and move on, to like, bigger and better things. College is supposed to be better,” Patrick said. Pete wrinkles his nose, almost involuntarily.

“Who told you _that_?” Patrick just scowls.

“You know what I mean, asshole.” He relents and gets a soft look in his eyes, and Pete thinks of the keychain picture of Lake Michigan. “I always liked the idea that I would always belong with my family. With the people I hang around with at home. I don’t know…”

“And now you don’t?” Pete prompts. 

“No. I don’t think I do, and maybe I could live with it, but...is this” he gestures around the apartment “where I belong now?”

“My apartment?”

“No, I mean here, generally. This school, Drury. You live here, you know there’s fucking nothing here. If I belong here, it's as good as belonging nowhere.” His eyes well up again, and his face is all red with emotion. It's a surreal sight. Pete doesn’t really know what to do. Patrick doesn’t stop crying, either, he just does it into Pete’s shoulder instead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a lot of crying in this story. lol though y'all aint seen nothing yet when it comes to crying tho.


	8. hypothesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pete gets an email

A week later another email from the university is sitting in Pete’s inbox, and he receives the news that there’s been another suicide. It's the fourth in less than two years. He didn’t know the girl, and hadn’t know any of the others, either. But he sits back in his desk chair and stares at the computer screen. 

Later that day he walks into the PSSA meeting, where, in true Poli Sci department fashion, they are already discussing why this has happened. 

“The dean loves to blame greek life, what a cop-out,” one guy says. 

“People are stressed up here,” says another, his name is Ben. “And there’s nothing to let it out, nothing but drinking.” Pete wonders exactly how he thinks people blow off steam in cities, but doesn’t ask. Pete thinks he knows, anyway, because maybe it's nice to be able to go to a club once in awhile, or even to be able to go a fucking Waffle House, of which Drury has none.

“Exactly!” Exclaims the first guy, whose name Pete doesn’t know, even though they both come to every meeting. “And I know so many people who have tried everything, just to cope! They’re on the Dean’s List and they snort fucking cocaine every weekend!”

The conversation goes on this way. The police department treats substance abuse the wrong way, and collaborates with the university under the table. Pete knows it's true, but its also pointless. They’re young, and they’re scared by all the death.

That’s why they’re really talking about this. Trying to figure out why. Ben, and the other guy, Patrick, and Pete himself. It's all the same thing. They all think that if they can just figure out _why_ , then maybe they can save themselves. 

Even before the email this morning, Pete wonders everyday if he’ll end up as another email from the student relations board. Just another _I know this is a hard time for many of you…_ And Patrick hasn’t gotten better, the tears keep coming when he thinks no one sees, when he thinks _Pete_ doesn’t see. That haunts him, too, because it can’t just be homesickness. It fucking can’t be. But Patrick won’t tell him and Pete doesn’t know how to convince him to. 

Ben and the other guy are still talking, but as soon as Pete feels the tears creep into his eyes, he gets up and walks out. He’s not gonna cry in front of a bunch of Poli Sci majors. It’ll make them feel bad that he walked out, but not as bad as if he’d cried in front of them, so he isn’t guilty. 

It's still cold out. He doesn’t wanna go back to the apartment yet, but the only other place to go at this hour would be the gas station. He trudges home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> o fuck the plot kicked in


	9. quickness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the technicalities of both stages and reading

There’s a March concert for the University’s chamber orchestra. Pete rushes to the performance hall after he finishes taking a midterm on political thought, and finds a seat in the nearly empty front row. 

Pete has spent his fair share of time onstage, during debate or to accept awards. He knows that when the lights go off, the front row is just about all you can see from the elevated place. He doesn’t know if he fancies the idea or not, but he does make eye contact with Patrick when he sees him carry his cello out. 

His eyes are wide, when he sees Pete his lips twitch in something like happiness. Still, the way he looks, Pete was unable to forget that the blackness starts behind him, a void that Patrick looks into blindly.

He is the principal cellist, though, and he smiles after a moment, big and bright as he takes his seat. 

There’s Telemann on the program, naturally there’s Bach, too. Pete doesn’t care too much, he came to see Patrick, not to broaden his musical horizons. 

Later, after the concert finishes, Pete finds Patrick in the empty orchestra room, sitting next to the cello that he hasn’t packed up yet. He doesn’t say anything, but walks up to put a hand on his shoulder. 

“I messed up,” Patrick says.

“No one noticed,” Pete says, familiar with the line by now, because Patrick says it all the time, and Pete reassures him even more often. 

“No. I mean--yes--but also, sometimes when it just keeps going for pages, there are moments where my brain just can’t do it anymore. Like I can’t even read,” he says, with a hand on his temple. “That’s always happened. I used to think it would stop.”

Pete doesn’t know what to say to that. There’s a tiredness in Patrick’s voice that Pete understands. He wants to show Patrick, somehow, that he isn’t alone in the feeling. But there doesn’t seem to be any way to do it. 

He doesn’t say anything, but he does bend down to close the hard shell case on the cello, strapping it to his own back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its been ages since I touched this but tbh I still care about writing this a lot--even if it is a bit directionless right now. expect more soon


	10. lost at home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aftermath of a party that Pete wasn't at

It’s 3:36 in the morning, Pete is sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to his chest. His short fingernails dig into the flesh around his calves, trying hard not to think of anything at all.

There’s a knock on the door.

It isn’t a soft or polite knock, but a harsh kind of banging that makes Pete wonder for a wild second if someone is kicking his door in. He wipes his bloodied nails on his pants before he rushes to the door and throws it open, only for Patrick to fall forward, as though he had been leaning on it for support. Pete isn’t ready to hold him up, though, and they both end up on the floor. 

“Patrick?” Pete asks when he can reign in his confusion. Patrick is moving sluggishly on top of him, and he figures it out at long last. “Are you drunk?”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Patrick listlessly, and grabs the doorknob trying to drag himself back to his feet. Pete stands up quick enough to stop him from breaking the door, though, and instead holds him up at the armpit. “Hey, I’m s’posed to show you this,” Patrick slurs, and holds up his hand. 

The back of Patrick’s hand has a message on it, written in something that might be lipstick, but just as easily resembles dried blood. It says: _too drunk to go to campus_. A label, as easy as any other. Suddenly, Pete is thrown back to the time when he lived in the dorms: the university is dry, and going back into the dorms after midnight requires a check-in. Patrick wouldn’t make it in his state. He’d be spending the night in jail instead of his own bedroom. 

Even so, whoever wrote the message was obviously highly intoxicated as well. It makes Pete feel a sharp flare of anger, that someone who had a place to go wrote on Patrick and sent him off to find his own way to Pete’s. 

“Come on,” he says in a way he hopes is soothing. He sits Patrick on the couch and retrieves a bottle of water before he joins him. “Drink this,” he says. To Patrick’s credit, he is not a belligerent drunk. Pete only has to watch him spill water down his front for a second before he’s drinking it as told. 

“What happened?” Pete asks finally, and Patrick takes time to answer before he heaves a sigh and lets his head fall back. 

“Went to a party,” Patrick says, and Pete finds the answer unhelpful. Luckily, elaboration comes quickly: “There was like, jungle juice, it was all red,” he breaks off into strange chuckling. 

“Yeah,” Pete laughs a little, too. “You’re covered in it, ‘trick,” it's true. Patrick is wearing a grey David Bowie shirt, but between the alcohol and the sweat staining the thing, it's seen better days. 

“Sorry I bothered you,” says Patrick, and his face goes all downcast. His drunkenness makes his emotions clearer and blurrier all at once, shame is coming through like music on a staticky radio turned all the way up. “They kept telling me I would get caught.”

“You definitely would have gotten caught,” Pete agrees. “But I don’t mind you coming here. I’m glad to be distracted.” He pauses and feels the sting from wear he’d been scratching himself earlier. It’s easy to ignore, so he does. “Why’d you get so drunk, anyway?”

“My mom called today.” Pete chuckles, he knows it's a little mean to, but the way he says it is funny. 

“That bad?”

“No...no, no, I love my mom,” Patrick backtracks. “She called and asked me if I knew that girl who died.”

“I didn’t know they still bothered to tell our parents,” Pete remarks, and can’t help the sourness in his tone. Patrick winces a little, and he remembers too late that drunk people find it extremely difficult to place tone. He leans in and gives an apology cuddle, and doesn’t even say anything about how gross it is. He’s had much worse than Patrick-sweat. 

“She calls every time. She worries about that kind of thing, I guess.” Patrick gives a little movement that amounts to a shrug. “Did you call your parents about it?” 

“No,” Pete admits. “I don’t talk to them about things like that.” It's true. He barely talked about his feelings when he was growing up, let alone now. Sometimes he considers showing his mom the things he writes. But he thinks it would be cruel to show his mother what her oldest child amounted to. So he doesn’t. 

“You do have things to say about it though, right?” Pete just looks at Patrick when he says that. Patrick seems very small underneath the beanie he’s wearing. Pete’s heard him sing, and knows with a deep conviction that Patrick is great, and the whole world will someday know it. What does Pete feel about the dead girl? About all the death around them? 

Patrick is still looking at him, waiting for an answer, and Pete can see himself from the outside; where Patrick holds onto his shoulder just to stay upright, and even though Pete is stone-sober, he needs those hands there, too, holding him up. Speaking is easy. 

“It scares me,” he says plainly, and already there are tears creeping into his eyes. “I’m scared that next time it won’t be some girl we don’t know,” the tears are running, now, but it’s Patrick so he can’t bring himself to be ashamed, not when he’s talking about this. “You have to know what I mean,” he says, almost pleading. 

“Every time, it's always more, more, and more,” it doesn’t make much sense, but Pete nods desperately.

“Every time I get another fucking notice about it, and I’m scared next time it’ll be me. I’m scared next time it’ll be you,” he gives Patrick a little shake by the shoulders. “Everyone’s giving up, and no one even fucking cares. I’m just afraid...that I’ll stop being able to do it.”

“Pete,” Patrick says urgently, and when he makes eye contact his eyes are so, so big, full of promise, maybe. “If you weren’t here, I’d have nowhere to go,” he says slowly. “I can’t get arrested here, and I’d just have kept drinking, just kept going until I died, because I’d know I’d have nowhere,” he sounds so sad, so horribly sad. “If you weren’t here…” he trails off like he’s considering a world without Pete, and the thought upsets him.

If this was meant to cheer Pete up, it fails utterly. Pete isn’t crying anymore, but choking on strange, aborted noises. He hugs Patrick close to him, so close, and Pete’s always been a hugger but he can’t remember the last time he _felt_ something so close to another person. 

It occurs to Pete later, when Patrick is asleep and he is alone with his thoughts, that to feel fear with another person is a very intimate thing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> getting weirdly autobiographical


	11. liars and fakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the morning after the previous chapter

When Patrick wakes up the next day, Pete is already awake and watching the TV from the other end of the couch. He doesn’t have the worst headache, which must be a grace of his youth, because he has a huge gap in his memories of the night before. 

“How did I get here?” He asks aloud, and the sound of his own voice sends a flare of discomfort through him. He’d been laying flat on his back on the couch, Pete only having room to sit because of his rather diminutive height. He sat up now and rested elbows on his knees while Good Morning America played.

“Not sure,” Pete shrugs. “I assume you walked, but I wasn’t there so I couldn’t say,” he says. His tone seems guarded and Patrick is instantly more alert, ready to face whatever damage had been done. 

“Well, what happened when I got here?” He demanded, unwilling to play at niceness. Patrick knew Pete, and knew that if he deferred to Pete in what was important, there would certainly be something left out. Something important that would keep bothering Pete, and Patrick would have no idea. 

“We just talked. Sat on the couch. You drank some water and went to sleep,” Pete summarized and then noticed the hard stare that Patrick kept trained on him. “I don’t really remember what we talked about. I was tired and you could barely talk, anyway,” he said, and once the statement was made he seemed to gain confidence. Like he could get behind the thing now that he himself knew what the story was. 

“You’re lying,” says Patrick, with a sure harshness that has Pete’s skin crawling when he remembers the awful, special feeling of Patrick cuddled up against him and whispering about how if he didn’t have Pete, he’d have no one. 

“I’m not!” He replies, raising his voice slightly. “We just talked about that girl who died, I’m sure you can imagine the rest!” Patrick went quiet for a long time, and Pete felt a little bad for yelling. But he didn’t say anything, just watched Patrick from the corner of his eye while he faced the newscast. 

He sat with emotional stiffness until he felt Patrick’s hand lightly on his elbow. “Its okay, okay?” He said, clearly mustering internal strength, certain he was to bear some unthinkable humiliation. “We don’t have to go through it all again. I know its hard,” he said. Pete sighed, but not in exasperation. Just a sigh. Like breathing was suddenly too much work and he needed a break from it. Patrick understood that this was all the response he would get, and stood up to find advil in the kitchen cupboard, swallowing it dry and putting some dishes in the wash while coffee brewed. 

It had always seemed to him, somehow, that there would be a moment where he felt like he belonged in his own life. Or less like the real Patrick had been done away with, maybe years ago, and now he was just some shadow that had taken the empty space without anyone noticing. So far, this moment had not come. Sometimes he could trick himself, usually if he was drunk, but the underlying feeling of being a _cheat_ in his own body never left. If the real Patrick ever returned, maybe he would be someone who would know what to say when Pete was hurt. Someone who knew how to not do the hurting. Patrick hoped so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter is quite long (for me) but I am a bit uncertain about it so it may be a week or so.


	12. drawing blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two scenes of reflection in sequence

Patrick couldn’t feel his fingers in the cold, his cheap gloves hold almost no protection against the frigid air. Inside Pizza Hut, however, it is near uncomfortably warm, and the chilled numbness quickly morphs into the dull ache of warming back up. 

He stood silent while Joe mumbled their order to the cashier. He hadn’t felt much like speaking, lately. Not since before the night he'd gotten drunker than ever. The weight of his own tongue often seems insurmountable. 

There’s another man standing at the front of the store, next to a gumball machine that looks as though its best days are behind it. He’s scratching at his face, hard enough that red lines are appearing on his cheek in the small space he’s chosen. Patrick tries to ignore it. He really tries. 

The guy isn’t quitting though, and now he’s drawing blood from his own cheek. Giving up on looking with his peripheral vision, Patrick turns his head to see that the man is breathing through his mouth, and has a rather severe case of meth-mouth. 

Patrick looks away and puts it out of his mind. 

“You wanna get coffee on the way back?” Joe asks him. Patrick doesn’t really want to go to the gas station. It’s the only place to get coffee, because the little local cafe closes at 6 o'clock. He already knows how it will turn out if they go--one of the D Chi’s will inevitably be working the register, and Joe will be put in a bad mood because he’s embarrassed and angry over being blacklisted.

Patrick gets it--he really gets it. None of the D Chi brothers will talk to him either now, even though he’d come to consider a few of them friends. It’s enough that Patrick knows Joe has left something out of the story. A lost handle of UV wouldn’t cause this. But the shunning is humiliating and it makes Patrick’s fists clench just to think about it. 

There’s another part--a small part that he never lets see the light of day--that is so, so hurt by this. Hurt by the idea that he doesn't matter to them, and never mattered at all. That he'd been fooled into friendship like an idiot. On the outside, this heartbroken feeling only comes out as more anger. They hadn’t gone through with the plan to report the fraternity to the University, but Patrick still hopes that they’re all suffering. 

“Sure,” he says anyway, because he really does want coffee. And trying to avoid a bad mood has never worked for him before.

The guy next to the gumball machine is still tweaking, if anything his situation has gotten worse, with blood dripping down onto the sleeve of his coat, now. Patrick wants him to stop, wants to scream _Why do you fucking do this to yourself?!_ But he doesn’t. He’s not an idiot--he’s seen the scratches the Pete tries to hide, too. But Pete doesn’t do it because he’s tweaking on crank (unless he’s a lot better at keeping secrets than Patrick has ever given him credit for). 

_Nah_ , he thinks. _Pete does it because he’s fucking insane._ Patrick draws in a quick breath, is sorry as soon as he thinks such an uncharitable thing, but he can’t take back the fear behind the statement. He loves Pete, might even be _in love_ with Pete. But he still thinks these things about him, and can’t even tell himself it's not fucking true. Can’t tell himself that the worry isn’t true. 

His eyes grow wet, and he cries. Right in the middle of the Pizza Hut, everything he puts up with silently has suddenly become too much. The meth head doesn’t notice and the cashier doesn’t care, but Joe puts an arm around his shoulders and looks wearily concerned, like he’s dealt with this before. He has. 

Patrick wants so badly to get angry. He had once made rage into an art--every feeling could be painted in it, every thought translated. 

But its not like that anymore. Now even his anger just melts into despair.

\------------------------------- 

Pete isn’t an instrumentalist--even in his artistic moments, he focuses more on words than on notes. But using Patrick’s cello, which occupies his living room more often than not these days, he’s taught himself the eight note sequence that comprises the cello part of Pachelbel’s canon. 

Its something he finds relaxing--to turn up a recording and play along. He knows it's also a great signifier of Patrick’s trust in him, that he’s allowed to touch the cello at all.

There’s something special about the canon, fascinating to Pete in his sense of social science: he can’t recall ever hearing it for the first time. If he conducted a survey, he doubts that anyone else could pick out a specific instance, either. And yet, it is known. 

His thoughts stop being scientific, then, because he fancies that perhaps everyone is born with the knowledge of it, that Pachelbel had written something so providential that each mind afterward was stamped with it. The thought makes something young flutter in his stomach.

He wonders if a good lawyer spends his free time considering things like this. Probably not. But he continues playing, anyway. 

The front door bangs open, and Joe and Patrick bang into the room, Joe depositing a pizza on top of the couch, and Patrick disappearing into the kitchen, hopefully to brew a pot of coffee in Pete’s shitty little machine. Nobody says anything. Pete pauses only to lay down the cello, gently on its side. When he looks up, Patrick is standing right in front of him, and Pete’s so surprised that his arm jerks and the bow clatters to the floor. 

He wishes desperately that it hadn’t, because when it does the black frog at the bottom pops loose and the bow hair ends up in a looping heap on the floor.

Patrick’s mouth is open, and he staggers back a step, looking for all the world like it was his heart that Pete had broken and not his instrument. 

“Patrick, I’ll pay for a new one-” he says as quickly as he can get out, but Patrick doesn’t listen, instead he kicks the empty hard shell case hard enough to send it clattering across the room, and runs out the door the next second. Pete hears him crying on the way out, and it isn’t a silent type of crying, but the wail that only comes out when someone has been pushed too far for them to handle. Pete knows, because he’s made the same sound more times than he wants to remember. 

“He didn’t mean that,” Joe says, but his eyes are wide. “He’s been upset all day. There was this meth head at the pizza place, I guess.”

“Fuck,” Pete scrubs a hand over his face. “ _Fuck_.” Its a 2 hour drive to a town with a music store sophisticated enough to repair and sell cello bows, and they won’t be open by the time he gets there. It will have to wait until tomorrow. 

He picks up the broken thing and lays it carefully on the coffee table. When he stands back to look at it, his fists close so tightly that his nails cut into the skin of his palms. 

He wouldn’t have stopped, would’ve just kept hurting himself, but he jumps when Joe puts a hand on his shoulder. 

“I meant it when I said he’s having a bad day,” he repeats. “It's not your fault, man.” Pete nods, and he knows Joe is right. The day can have a million last straws, and Pete was unlucky enough today to be Patrick’s. It was an accident. It isn’t anyone’s fault. 

“Let’s just eat the damn pizza,” Joe says, huffing out a tired laugh. Pete thinks that Joe is a very good friend. Someone he doesn’t want to let go of. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah sometimes it do just be that way

**Author's Note:**

> see you in the next thrilling installment


End file.
